Common Interest Community Ombudsperson and Expedited Resolution Act

Drafting status. A complete bill draft with a sponsor’s memorandum. No bill number is assigned and no sponsor has agreed to carry it. Every citation was verified against a primary source on 2026-07-27; see Part VI.

This bill is designed around why the last nine ombudsperson bills failed. Part III sets that out before the operative text, because the drafting choices only make sense once you know what killed the predecessors.

PART I — SPONSOR’S MEMORANDUM IN SUPPORT

BILL NUMBER: to be assigned

TITLE OF BILL: An act to amend the real property law, in relation to establishing an office of the common interest community ombudsperson and an expedited administrative procedure for the resolution of enumerated disputes between unit owners and associations, and to amend the civil practice law and rules in relation thereto.

PURPOSE OR GENERAL IDEA OF BILL:

To give an owner and a board a way to resolve an ordinary building dispute in ninety days, at a filing fee instead of a retainer, in a forum that costs the taxpayer less than the one they use now — and to make the ninety days real by deciding the case on whatever record the parties actually submit.

SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:

Section 1 sets out legislative findings.

Section 2 adds a new article to the real property law establishing the Office of the Common Interest Community Ombudsperson, funded by an annual per-unit fee, with duties of assistance, information, and the administration of the expedited procedure created by section 3.

Section 3 establishes the expedited resolution procedure: enumerated covered disputes, a fixed ninety-day schedule from filing to determination, submission windows binding on both parties, determination on the record actually submitted, a monetary cap, a reopening provision for excusable neglect, and enforcement of a determination as a judgment.

Section 4 provides that a covered dispute may not be commenced as a civil action until the procedure has been exhausted, and preserves review under article 78 of the civil practice law and rules.

Section 5 provides severability and effective dates.

JUSTIFICATION:

The mechanism. A unit owner who is refused the association’s financial records has, today, exactly one route: hire counsel and commence a special proceeding in Supreme Court. The claim is worth a few thousand dollars at most. The first motion costs more than that. The rational choice is to drop it — which is why the underlying duty is unenforced in practice regardless of what the statute says.

This bill creates a second route. A covered dispute is filed with the Ombudsperson. The respondent has thirty days to answer and submit evidence. The petitioner has fifteen days to reply. The Ombudsperson determines the matter within the remaining time, and the whole sequence closes at ninety days from filing.

The provision that makes ninety days mean ninety days. In an ordinary civil action, the party who benefits from delay controls the calendar, because every extension is granted and every adjournment is routine. That party is almost always the one holding the documents.

Under section 3 of this bill, a party that does not submit within its window does not get an extension. The Ombudsperson determines the matter on the record actually submitted. If the association declines to answer, the determination is made on the owner’s evidence. If the owner abandons the filing, it is made on the association’s. The incentive that currently rewards delay is removed, and it is removed symmetrically — neither side gains anything by running out the clock, because the clock does not stop.

This is not a punitive default. It is a determination on the record, made after written notice that states the deadline and the consequence in plain language, subject to reopening for excusable neglect within thirty days, and subject to judicial review under article 78 of the civil practice law and rules — under which a court may consider whether a determination was made in violation of lawful procedure, was affected by an error of law, or was arbitrary and capricious, and whether a determination made after an evidentiary hearing is supported by substantial evidence on the entire record. Both quoted standards are verified at CPLR 7803.

The cost to the public. A Supreme Court proceeding consumes a judge, a courtroom, a clerk, and a court reporter. Those are public costs. The filing fee does not come close to covering them, and it is not designed to. Every covered dispute resolved administratively is a proceeding the courts do not have to staff.

No dollar figure is asserted in this memorandum. The New York State Unified Court System’s per-case cost was not available from a verified source at the time of drafting, and this bill will not put a number in front of a legislator that its author cannot source. What can be said is directional and it is enough: the expedited procedure is funded by a per-unit fee paid by the buildings that use it, and it removes cases from a forum funded by general taxation. Whatever the per-case figure turns out to be, the sign of the fiscal effect is not in doubt.

For scale, CondosCoopsNYC’s own review of the NYSCEF docket identified on the order of five thousand three hundred cooperative and condominium matters filed per year in recent years. That is an internal CondosCoopsNYC measurement, not an official court statistic, and it is offered here only as an order of magnitude. A fiscal note should use the Office of Court Administration’s own figures.

Why the sponsor should care about Part III. An ombudsperson bill has been introduced in nine consecutive sessions since 2009 and has never been reported to the floor. Every version died in Finance. The design choices in this bill are addressed to that fact and are set out in Part III.

PRIOR LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:

An office of the cooperative and condominium ombudsman has been proposed in each of the following sessions, with each version failing in the Finance committee: S.7958 (2009–2010); S.395 / A.6941 (2011–2012); S.3152 / A.34 (2013–2014); S.2832 / A.1855 (2015–2016); S.5839 / A.11109 (2017–2018); S.2604 / A.1482 (2019–2020); S.494 / A.3157 (2021–2022); S.6242 / A.745 (2023–2024); and S.7745 / A.10286 (2025–2026), sponsored by Senator Shelley B. Mayer.

The current bill, S.7745, adopts the funding solution this bill retains: a six dollar annual residential unit fee in place of an appropriation. All verified 2026-07-27.

This bill differs from every predecessor in one respect: it adds an adjudicative function with a fixed schedule, and therefore a cost reduction to set against the program’s cost.

FISCAL IMPLICATIONS FOR STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS:

Self-funding on the revenue side: an annual per-unit fee, following the mechanism in S.7745, in place of a general fund appropriation.

Cost-reducing on the expenditure side: covered disputes that presently consume Supreme Court resources are diverted to an administrative forum funded by the fee. This bill is the first ombudsperson proposal that puts anything in the savings column, which is the column the Finance committee reads.

EFFECTIVE DATE:

Sections 1, 2 and 5 take effect on the first of January next succeeding the date on which this act becomes a law. Sections 3 and 4 take effect eighteen months after that date, to permit the Ombudsperson to promulgate rules and stand up the procedure before any party is required to use it.

PART II — THE BILL

                           STATE OF NEW YORK
    ____________________________________________________________________

                                                    [NUMBER TO BE ASSIGNED]

                              IN SENATE / IN ASSEMBLY

    Introduced by ____ -- read twice and ordered printed, and when printed
      to be committed to the Committee on Housing, Construction and
      Community Development


    AN ACT to amend the real property law and the civil practice law and
      rules, in relation to an office of the common interest community
      ombudsperson and an expedited procedure for the resolution of
      enumerated disputes


    The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly,
    do enact as follows:

Section 1. Legislative findings.

The Legislature finds and declares as follows:

1. Disputes between unit owners and the boards that govern their buildings concern, in the ordinary case, sums far smaller than the cost of the civil proceeding presently required to resolve them.

2. The practical consequence is that duties imposed by law upon such boards are enforced only by owners able to bear a cost exceeding the value of the claim, and are otherwise unenforced.

3. Such proceedings consume judicial resources funded by general taxation, in matters that do not require a court.

4. Delay in such proceedings systematically advantages the party in possession of the records in dispute, because that party bears no cost from the passage of time.

5. A procedure that fixes a date certain for determination, and that determines the matter upon the record the parties have in fact submitted, removes the advantage that delay presently confers, and does so identically for both parties.

6. It is the purpose of this act to establish such a procedure, and an office to administer it, funded by the communities that use it rather than by appropriation.

§ 2. Office of the Common Interest Community Ombudsperson.

The real property law is amended by adding a new article to read as follows:

§ 1. Definitions. As used in this article, “association” means a condominium subject to article nine-B of this chapter, or a cooperative corporation organized for the purpose of providing residential occupancy to its shareholders; “owner” means a unit owner as defined in section three hundred thirty-nine-e of this chapter, or a shareholder in such a cooperative corporation; and “residential unit” means a unit, or the shares allocated to a unit, intended for residential occupancy.

§ 2. Office established. There is hereby established within the division of housing and community renewal an Office of the Common Interest Community Ombudsperson. The Ombudsperson shall be appointed by the commissioner of housing and community renewal and shall be qualified by training and experience to perform the duties of the office.

§ 3. Duties. The Ombudsperson shall:

  (a) assist unit owners and shareholders in understanding their rights and responsibilities under this chapter and under the governing documents of their associations;

  (b) assist members of boards of managers and boards of directors in understanding and carrying out their duties;

  (c) publish plain-language materials describing the rights and duties described in paragraphs (a) and (b) of this section;

  (d) receive and record inquiries and complaints, and publish annually, in aggregate and without identifying any individual, the number and category of matters received and their disposition;

  (e) administer the expedited resolution procedure established by section three of this act, set out at section six of this article; and

  (f) refer to the attorney general any matter appearing to involve repeated fraudulent or illegal acts within the meaning of subdivision twelve of section sixty-three of the executive law.

§ 4. Funding. There is hereby established the common interest community ombudsperson fund. The fund shall consist of an annual fee payable in respect of each residential unit in a condominium or cooperative corporation subject to this article, in an amount to be set by the commissioner of housing and community renewal and not to exceed six dollars per unit per year, together with filing fees collected under section three of this act. No moneys shall be appropriated from the general fund for the operation of the office.

§ 5. Rules. The Ombudsperson may promulgate rules necessary to implement this article, in accordance with article two of the state administrative procedure act.

§ 3. Expedited resolution procedure.

The real property law is amended by adding a new section to the article added by section two of this act, to read as follows:

§ 6. Expedited resolution of covered disputes.

1. Covered disputes. The following disputes between a unit owner or shareholder and an association, or between an association and a unit owner or shareholder, are covered disputes:

  (a) refusal or failure to permit inspection of, or to furnish, records the association is required by law or by its governing documents to maintain or furnish;

  (b) failure to hold an election, or to conduct an election in accordance with law or the governing documents;

  (c) imposition of a fee, fine, or charge alleged to be unauthorized by law or by the governing documents, or to have been adopted without a vote the governing documents require;

  (d) failure to furnish a disclosure required by law; and

  (e) any dispute the parties jointly submit in writing.

2. Excluded matters. This section shall not apply to any claim for personal injury or wrongful death, to any dispute concerning title to real property, to any foreclosure or proceeding to recover possession of real property, or to any claim in which the relief sought exceeds the monetary limit established by subdivision eight of this section.

3. Commencement. A covered dispute is commenced by filing a statement of claim with the Ombudsperson, together with the filing fee, and serving a copy upon the respondent in the manner prescribed by rule. The statement of claim shall be accompanied by the evidence the claimant relies upon.

4. Notice. The Ombudsperson shall, within five business days of filing, serve upon the respondent a notice stating, in plain language and in no smaller than fourteen-point type:

  (a) the date by which the respondent’s answer and evidence must be submitted;

  (b) that if the respondent does not submit an answer and evidence by that date, the matter will be determined upon the record then before the Ombudsperson, which may consist solely of the claimant’s submission; and

  (c) the date on or before which a determination will be issued.

A notice under this subdivision shall be served upon the claimant in the same form, stating the corresponding dates and consequence applicable to the claimant.

5. Schedule. The following periods run from the date of filing and shall not be extended except as provided in subdivision seven of this section:

  (a) the respondent shall submit its answer and all evidence it relies upon not later than the thirtieth day;

  (b) the claimant may submit a reply and any evidence in response not later than the forty-fifth day;

  (c) the Ombudsperson may request specified additional information from either party, to be furnished not later than the sixtieth day; and

  (d) the Ombudsperson shall issue a written determination not later than the ninetieth day.

6. Determination upon the record submitted. The Ombudsperson shall determine the matter upon the record submitted within the periods prescribed by subdivision five of this section. A submission made after the applicable period shall not be considered. Where a party has submitted nothing within its period, the determination shall be made upon the record before the Ombudsperson without that party’s submission. A determination under this subdivision shall state the evidence relied upon and the reasons for the determination.

7. Reopening for excusable neglect. A party against whom a determination has been made without its submission may, within thirty days after service of the determination, apply to reopen upon a showing of a reasonable excuse for the failure to submit and of a meritorious position. The Ombudsperson shall grant or deny such application within twenty days, and shall grant it where both showings are made. Not more than one such application shall be entertained from any party in any matter.

8. Relief. The Ombudsperson may direct a party to produce records, to hold or re-conduct an election, to furnish a required disclosure, to refund or cease collecting an unauthorized charge, and may award a monetary sum not exceeding fifteen thousand dollars together with the filing fee. The Ombudsperson may not award punitive damages, and may not award attorneys’ fees except where a statute or the governing documents provide for them.

9. Effect and enforcement. A determination under this section is final and binding upon the parties, subject to article seventy-eight of the civil practice law and rules. A determination may be entered as a judgment in a court of competent jurisdiction upon application of any party and shall be enforceable as such.

10. Filing fee. The filing fee referred to in this section shall be set by rule and shall not exceed one hundred dollars. The Ombudsperson shall waive the fee upon a showing of inability to pay.

11. Representation. A party may appear with or without counsel. No party shall be required to appear by counsel.

§ 4. Exhaustion; judicial review.

1. No civil action or proceeding shall be commenced upon a covered dispute, as defined in section six of the article added by section two of this act, unless the procedure established by that section has been exhausted, or unless the Ombudsperson has declined the matter or has failed to issue a determination within the period prescribed.

2. Review of a determination shall be had under article seventy-eight of the civil practice law and rules and shall be commenced within the period prescribed by section two hundred seventeen of such law and rules.

3. Nothing in this act shall be construed to impair any right to trial by jury in any matter not within the definition of a covered dispute.

§ 5. Severability; effective dates.

If any provision of this act is held invalid, such invalidity shall not affect any other provision. Sections one, two and five of this act shall take effect on the first of January next succeeding the date on which this act shall have become a law. Sections three and four of this act shall take effect eighteen months after such date. Effective immediately, the commissioner of housing and community renewal and the Ombudsperson are authorized to promulgate any rule necessary for the timely implementation of this act.

PART III — WHY THE LAST NINE BILLS FAILED, AND WHAT THIS ONE DOES ABOUT IT

An ombudsperson has been proposed in New York in nine consecutive sessions since 2009. The bills are not obscure and the idea is not contested on the merits. They failed anyway, and the pattern is specific: each version died in the Finance committee, not in Housing and not in Judiciary.

That is a diagnosis, not a complaint. A bill dies in Finance when it reads as a new office with a new cost and no offsetting return. Every prior version read exactly that way. The response has to be fiscal, and it has to be on both sides of the ledger.

The revenue side is already solved, and this bill keeps the solution. The current version, S.7745, funds the office through a six dollar annual residential unit fee rather than an appropriation — verified 2026-07-27. That converts the program from a general fund line into a fee-funded service paid for by the buildings that use it. This bill adopts that design without alteration, and states expressly at § 3 of the new article that no moneys shall be appropriated from the general fund.

The expenditure side is what has never been addressed, and it is the whole point of the ninety-day procedure. A bill that only creates an office is asking Finance to approve a cost. A bill that creates an office and diverts cases out of the Supreme Court is asking Finance to approve a transfer — from a forum funded by general taxation to a forum funded by a user fee. Those are different asks and they get different reception.

That is why the adjudicative function is in this bill and was in none of its predecessors. It is not additional ambition. It is the fiscal argument.

Three further design choices follow from the same diagnosis.

The office is placed in an existing agency rather than created as a freestanding authority. A new agency has a new overhead line. A new office inside the division of housing and community renewal does not — and DHCR is where S.7745 already places it, so this bill does not pick a fight with the live vehicle over which agency owns the program.

The procedure’s effective date is eighteen months after the office’s. Finance committees are wary of programs that must deliver adjudication on day one. Standing up assistance and information first, and adjudication a year and a half later, is both operationally realistic and easier to score.

The monetary cap is deliberately low. Fifteen thousand dollars keeps the procedure clear of the disputes that genuinely belong before a judge, keeps the constitutional question about jury trial away from the bill’s core, and keeps the caseload projection modest enough to be credible.

What should still be expected. Finance will ask whether the fee actually covers the office. That question deserves a real answer and this document does not have one — see Part V. It should be answered with a costed staffing model before introduction, not improvised in a hearing.

PART IV — HOW THE NINETY-DAY RULE SURVIVES A DUE PROCESS CHALLENGE

The provision that makes this bill work is also the provision that will be attacked: a party that does not submit loses on the other party’s evidence. The objection writes itself — you are taking someone’s property on a default.

It is answerable, and the answer is built into the drafting rather than left to litigation.

It is not a default. A default judgment is entered because a party failed to appear. Under subdivision 6, the Ombudsperson determines the matter on the record and must state the evidence relied upon and the reasons. A claimant who submits nothing of substance loses even if the respondent never answers, because there is no record to support relief. The non-participating party is not penalized; it is simply absent from a record that is then weighed.

Notice is specific and it states the consequence. Subdivision 4 requires the notice to state the deadline, the consequence of missing it, and the determination date, in plain language and in fourteen-point type — and requires that the identical notice go to both parties. Neither side can claim surprise.

There is a reopening valve. Subdivision 7 permits one application to reopen on a showing of reasonable excuse and a meritorious position, decided within twenty days. That is the ordinary standard for relief from a default in New York practice and it keeps the ninety-day schedule intact for everyone who is merely losing rather than genuinely prevented.

Judicial review is preserved and is the right kind. Section 4 routes review to article 78 of the CPLR, under which a court may consider whether a determination was made in violation of lawful procedure, was affected by an error of law, or was arbitrary and capricious or an abuse of discretion, and — where the determination followed a hearing at which evidence was taken pursuant to direction by law — whether it is supported by substantial evidence on the entire record. Both standards are quoted from CPLR 7803, verified 2026-07-27. The four-month clock is at CPLR 217, verified.

Jury trial is not implicated at the core. The covered disputes in subdivision 1 are equitable and administrative in character — production of records, conduct of an election, cessation of an unauthorized charge. The monetary component is capped at fifteen thousand dollars and section 4(3) states expressly that nothing in the act impairs a jury right in any matter outside the covered definition. This is the most likely line of attack and it is the reason the cap is where it is.

PART V — OPEN DRAFTING QUESTIONS

These must be resolved before introduction. They are listed because a Finance staffer will find them in an afternoon.

1. The fee has not been costed against a staffing model. Six dollars per unit against the residential condominium and cooperative universe produces a number; whether that number funds an office capable of determining the projected caseload within ninety days has not been modelled. This is the single most important unfinished piece of this bill. It should be answered before it is carried, not during.

2. The caseload projection does not exist. The order-of-magnitude figure in the memorandum is a CondosCoopsNYC docket measurement, not an official statistic, and it counts filed cases rather than covered disputes. A real projection requires the Office of Court Administration’s own data.

3. Article and section numbers are placeholders. Real property law article 9-B runs §339-d to §339-ll and articles 9-A through 9-E are occupied — verified 2026-07-27. The Legislative Bill Drafting Commission assigns the actual designations.

4. Exhaustion may be the most contested provision after the ninety-day rule. Requiring a party to use an administrative forum before a court is common but not free of objection, particularly where the association is the claimant. An alternative is to make the procedure elective by either party, which weakens the fiscal argument considerably. The trade-off should be made deliberately.

5. Cooperatives are corporations. Most New York City housing cooperatives are Business Corporation Law corporations. Whether a real property law article can reach a shareholder-cooperative dispute, or whether a parallel BCL provision is required, needs Commission review — the same question flagged in the Fraud Prevention and Recovery Act draft.

6. Who pays the fee. The bill says the fee is payable “in respect of each residential unit.” Whether the association remits it and recovers it through common charges, or the unit owner is billed directly, is unresolved and has real administrative consequences.

7. Interaction with S.7745. If S.7745 advances, this bill should be offered as an amendment to it rather than as a competing vehicle. Nine sessions of history argue for adding to the live bill rather than starting a tenth.

PART VI — CITATION APPENDIX

Verified 2026-07-27 against the source shown.

Claims deliberately not made

Correction made after first drafting

PATH TO PASSAGE

Choke-point analysis: the choke-point analysis. In the 2025 session 16,794 bills were introduced and roughly 800 reached the Governor — about 4.8%. Verified 2026-07-27.

Route: amend S.7745. Do not introduce a tenth ombudsperson bill.

Nine consecutive sessions since 2009 have introduced an ombudsperson bill and every one died in Finance — verified 2026-07-27. That is a fiscal-referral defeat, not a policy defeat, and it is the reason this draft exists in the form it does.

The Finance argument, in the order it should be made. First: the program is funded by a $6 annual per-unit fee, not an appropriation — that is already in S.7745 and it answers the revenue side. Second, and this is what none of the nine had: the expedited procedure removes cases from a forum funded by general taxation. This is the first version of the bill with anything in the savings column, which is the column Finance reads.

What must be done before it is carried. The $6 fee has never been costed against a staffing model capable of determining cases within ninety days. A Finance staffer will ask, and “we think it’s enough” loses the room. Build the costed model first.

The registry interaction. If the Registry and Division Act also advances, a building faces two separate per-unit state fees. Nobody has added them up. Do that before either is introduced, or the first fiscal analyst to notice will do it for you.

Related: LEGISLATIVE_MODEL.md · LEGISLATIVE_MODEL-citation-verification.md · solution S04 and S24 in 01_Database/condoscoop.db · public appeal at /appeals/ombudsperson/